It all depends on how successful you are, but generally I would say not. For a social app to be successful, you have to have a volume of users and that would probably overwhelm a typical low-cost web host. You need to be able to scale to do this.
So web hosting or VDH ?
Have you created a specification for what all this social network will do? What data are you tracking? What information is important to the user? Do you need fast notifications like facebook where you see comments popup on the screen as they happen?
Until you know your server needs, that question will be very hard to answer.
Rob
I will keep track of comments, messages ,user accounts and posts
Let me start off by saying it is absolutely possible to setup a social network with a web hosting. But I think you are going to run into walls and it is going to be harder to scale. On the other hand vdh are more scalable and open. Vdh are harder to setup but are more customizable. I also don’t think you can sent push notifications from a web service( if you want to do that)
Okay so you recommend VDH ?
Yes that is my recommendation, once you go vdh you don’t go back.
okay thanks
https://github.com/dmccuskey/dmc-wamp?files=1
https://github.com/dmccuskey/DMC-Corona-Library?files=1
https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/64987-mysql/
https://coronalabs.com/blog/2015/06/02/tutorial-connecting-to-restful-api-services/
http://omnigeek.robmiracle.com/2012/04/15/using-corona-sdk-with-rest-api-services/
WAMP stands for Windows + Apache + MySQL + PHP. It’s a Windows setup that mimics LAMP (Linux, …) or MAMP (Mac, …) All of them produce an out-of-the-box setup where the computer will act as a webserver (Apache running on port 80) that knows how to process PHP scripts. PHP can talk to multiple database types, but the setup will usually install MySQL as the database for it.
If you install WAMP on your personal computer, it’s great for development, but it’s not great for serving data to the public. You may have to modify your home firewall/router to put your computer into a DMZ or area that the general internet can connect to. This opens your personal computer to to being hacked as you allow people to open connections to your computer (normally your firewall/router would block those connections). Also when you run high memory apps like Photoshop, you will likely impact performance of your WAMP server or if you have a lot of connections to your server from the outside, it will hurt your performance. You can setup a dedicated box this way, but you have to be able to get it into an open area of your network. If you internet provider manages your router, you may not get public access to a machine on your network.
This is what web hosts are for. You pay them a small monthly fee and they manage the network and hardware for you. You just have to write your scripts, HTML, CSS and such and manage your database.
Rob
Oh okay thanks . I am still writing my app which means I don’t need to pay for web hosting right now . Do you know what web hosting services are give free hosting for a certain amount of GB’s ?
Digital ocean give you two month for free and Amazon give you free year of service. I use digital ocean which is more open and easier to hack.
I am using 000webhost . Do you think it’s safe ?
are you using free or paid?
free because i’m still testing/creating my app
Free sucks, no ssl(required for Apple) and if you have inactivity it will shut down. You cannot use your own domain and closed system. Since there is no ssl it is not secure.
I honestly cannot recommend them.
It is also not scalable.
Okay so … What if I use it now . And when I’m ready to go live switch to GoDaddy ?
You can use who every you want. You may want to use lets encrypt with your site.
I know that , but I want something very safe for users .